


Climb Back Up

by leoandlancer



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Mei is the cozy character and i love her, Tobogganing, i just want Mei to have a good time, mountain climbing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-03
Updated: 2019-04-03
Packaged: 2020-01-04 08:09:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18339623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leoandlancer/pseuds/leoandlancer
Summary: Mei takes to the mountains for the first time since she returned from Antarctica.Written for the A-Mei-Zine, which sadly disbanded in preproduction.





	Climb Back Up

Mei swung her pick into the white ice of the waterfall. She found good contact, good pressure, and pulled on her picks until she gained another half-metre of elevation. She eased her lower boot out of the ice, stepped up, planted spikes, tested the grip, and shifted her weight until her left pick was idle and she could yank it clear of the wall. She reached up and swung. Good contact, good pressure. 

She climbed. 

It was still early in the day. She was taking a far more aggressive accent than most climbers took, one that took her up as far and as fast as was humanly endurable. It was, however, the least travelled, and Mei had her own reasons for the climb today. Her first climb since she'd returned to Overwatch. First climb since she woke up. 

The sun was still below the adjacent mountain range, Mei could see the sunshine above her, a shaft of brilliant gold in the powdered snow, and it cast a diamond hard division of light and shadow on the frozen waterfall above her. 

Snowball chirped at her from over her shoulder, and Mei looked around, surprised she'd already made it so far. But Snowball was right, she was just shy of ten metres from her last stop. 

"Thanks, Snowball," Mei curled into the wall, only three points of contact as she upholstered her blaster and held her tongue between her teeth as she took careful aim. 

Nearly ten metres below her, there was a trough of ice clinging to the side of the frozen waterfall. She spent a few minutes adding to it, carefully building up the ice until the trough was cupped carefully up on both sides, stuck fast to the steep slope of the ice wall, and close enough she could stand on the fresh edge. 

The sun had climbed as she worked, and Mei rested her arms and reloaded her blaster, looking up at the mountain tops around her. The mountains were dark grey and white, shrouded in mist from the few unfrozen rivers, or by the clouds that came halfway up their slopes. The air was stark clear and Mei could see the individual fir trees on the opposite mountain's foothills, the edges of its rivers and gorges. The points and peaks of stone and ice.

Mei caught her breath in huge, achingly cold lungfuls of air. She felt scoured clean by the cold and relished the clarity around her, the cold, clean edges to everything for miles. Ten years since she'd been climbing, and she had missed this. This was part of her, and it needed to be part of her life. Because she was still alive, which was surprising, given the numbers. 

The last time she went climbing, it had been the week before she left for Antarctica. 

Her mind still shied away from thinking of Antarctica. The cold, and the quiet, the patient, endless hunger of the white world outside of the tiny oasis of sheltered heat. It was a strange thing to be trapped and dying in a space so wide open. Strange thing to be surrounded by beloved dead and unable to grieve. 

So, ten years since she'd had to shake hot blood down her cold arms again. Ten years since she'd felt the rasp of ice against her pick. Ten years and Mei was back where she liked to be, head height with the luminous clouds and the rising sun. 

The sloped ice trench under her feet was as solid as if it was just another part of the frozen waterfall it clung to. Mei checked for feeling in her fingers, her toes, the flats of her feet in their boots. She couldn't let any part of her go numb, not from pressure, not from cold. She had to be in tune with every part of herself, had to make sure she was whole and well enough for this. 

She had performed that quick self-check innumerable times as she snowshoed out of Antarctica. She moved always north, through the shining white plains of snow, rocky foothills and the crumpled, ancient ice. She took the time to check herself for inattention or frostbite or numbness, took the time to remind herself that she was warm enough inside the parka and wool hat. She still had her sledge and Snowball and her research. She was alive, and she still had a chance.

Mei turned back to the ice wall. The line dividing shadow and morning light was closer now, and Mei stretched her hand up into the light. The sun lit up the stitching on her gloves and threw the pattern of plum blossoms into sharp clarity. 

Mei smiled, then swung her pick into her hand, checked her ice-work once more, and climbed on. 

Snowball chirped to her every ten metres. She could pause, take stock, add to the trough of ice she was building below her, look around as the scenery changed by ten metre degrees at a time. That wasn’t a lot, on a mountainside, but they added up until by mid-day she was inside the clouds tumbling over the southeast mountain range, and the world was cool and humid and shadowless. The clouds glowed around her with sourceless golden light. Her eyebrows, eyelashes, and the fur of her hood grew rimed with frost.  

She plopped down in a snow drift for lunch. Midday, a little more than halfway to the summit. People who didn't bring camping gear turned back around now, the light died quickly in the evenings, and the nights were deadly cold and dark. Mei had no camping gear, just the tank of endothermic solution for the blaster, a map case over her shoulder, Snowball, and a packed lunch with a thermos of tea. 

The steam from the tea mingled with the glowing clouds around her, and for a while, Mei sat, happily eating off her lap, knees together, feet apart, ankles tipped out and toes tipped in. Snowball flew around her, describing wide, elegant arcs as he cast a Blizzard down the way they had come. It filled the ice work Mei had made, smoothing out the gaps and dips. Mei watched snowball go, cheered him on and watched as the clouds moved huge and silent and luminescent, until suddenly, the clouds parted before her and Mei could see right across to the opposite mountain range. The world was sharp and cold and clean, shadowed and edged with the midday light. 

She looked out at the mountains around her, at the wide banks of clouds, at the stark blue sky above her, at the golden edges to the waterfalls on the mountainsides. Mei had learned to hike and climb, learned climatology and how to build anything from anything else. But this was a new skill; she had begun to learn how to be still in the last few weeks. She could let time go on while she allowed what surrounded her to simply be. It was hard for her, especially in the cold. Before, she had never stopped, couldn't stop. She fought against stillness, she fought inaction, she fought against inertia, and always,  _ always _ she fought the cold. 

Zarya had taught her the value of stillness though. Not of giving in to the cold, but allowing it to be one more part of her surroundings, something she was equal to, along with everything else. Mei was learning a lot from Zarya. 

Mei ducked her head a little into the collar of her parka, nuzzling down into frost-rimed furs to hide her own smile. 

After lunch was packed up, Mei climbed on, pausing every ten metres to aim her blaster back down the way she'd come. Sometimes she could spend minutes at a time shaping the next arc of her ice work. Occasionally some hasty math was performed, Mei using her gloved finger to trace numbers and arcs in the snow. She built switchbacks up the slope of the mountainside, until the ice work became a long, curving trough, rounding entirely into a tunnel at the corners. 

It was a faster climb when she reached the ridge and could build ice into the mountain's long spine. The ice-work was forming nicely into a long, smoothly unbroken channel down the mountain behind her. Every few stops, she would cast Snowball back down the way they had come, and wait in the quiet of the mountain ridge while she watched the localized blizzard fill the gaps in the snow behind her and dust the ice work with fresh powder. 

It was a comfort to stand in the knee-deep snow of the mountain's ridge, looking forward to the summit ahead of her. Mei was warm inside her coat, the heat constantly pushed back against the cold pressing down on her shoulders, trying to creep down the back of her collar. Her hat was thick wool, the long ear flaps cradling her face, her ears were hot under wool and fur with Mei panting the thin air as she looked around.

The first time she'd been warm since she got home from Antarctica, warm without trying to be,  had been back in Gibraltar, in the jungle-heat of Winston's laboratory. The bliss had been somewhat undercut by the anxiety from meeting the other recruits. She was always shy in front of new people, even when one wasn’t the most beautiful woman under this kindly sky.

She climbed on. The clouds were far below her by the midafternoon when she sat down on the wall of her ice-work for a break. The air was thin, and her breath was pearly white and formed a little cloud above her in the still air. Snowball flew lazy arcs around her, and she cupped tea from the thermos in both hands. The sun was high over the western mountains now, and the sky was stark blue, the snow shining diamond bright around her, the shadows of the drifts a perfect pale blue. 

A bare sliver of green was visible between this summit and the other peaks of the mountains. The Watchpoint was down there, Mei had asked for this post so she could be close to the mountains, and Winston seemed to recognize why she had made the request, though Mei wasn't even sure if she did. All she knew was that she wanted to climb again, she wanted the cold clean lines of the mountains and the snow, wanted the sun to shine so brightly, be just this much closer to the sky. But she wanted it in her own time.

Three weeks she'd been at that Watchpoint, staring out the windows at the mountains and feeling miserable. Then Zarya had dumped a backpack down on Mei’s workbench and unceremoniously started to dump climbing gear into it. Mei automatically jumped up to repack it, and then started talking about what she would need, how she could climb. Zarya nodded with perfect confidence in her, and when Mei pointed to equipment and clothing and gear, Zarya brought her what she needed. They shared a cup of tea, and Zarya had chatted about mountain climbing, about snow and cold. Mei was flustered and badly spoken and almost inarticulate with a horrible mixture of dread and anticipation, but mostly, she was just grateful. 

Only a two-day hike to the base camp. Most hikers would take two days to reach the summit and back, but Mei intended to make the trip up and then back down in the same day. It was after midafternoon anyway, she wouldn't make the base camp if she tried to simply walk down to it now. 

Instead, she climbed higher. 

The last hours of the climb felt easier than she was expecting. She was tired, sore, and her sweat was cooling inside her fur and wool, but her ice-work was flawless behind her, and she could finish this climb. All around her, the mountains spread out, the clouds cool blue below her on the left, the open valley just visible on the right. The lines of the mountains, the divisions between snow and rock and trees was achingly clear from so close to the summit, where the air was thin and fine and bright with close sunlight.

Mei reached the summit when the sun had already set in the valley far below her. 

It was a snowy peak, a jagged, three-sided crest of rock and hardbound snow. Mei finished the last ten metres of her ice trough, holstered her blaster for the last time, and sank down onto her knees at the mountain's summit. 

The world spread out around her, the mountainsides falling away under her, the sun still bright and fierce just above the far mountains, the green valley away down on the southwest already in shadow. 

If she looked carefully, Mei could pick out the lines of the town down there. She could find the angles of streets and the curve of the river that marked the place where the Watchpoint was. She could imagine her team there, patiently waiting for her, ready in case she needed them. Waiting for her to come back. 

Mei swung the map case under her arm, cradling it over her chest as she gently unscrewed the cap, and pulled out a small, sturdy docking jetty. She cleared away snow and chipped out ice with her pick until she found solid stone, and it took her only a few minutes to install the dock on the mountain's peak. She could return here with Winston, in the ORCA on their way out to retrieve it, but in the meantime... 

Mei nuzzled up out of the fur collar, her cheeks and mouth and chin exposed to the mountain air for the first time in an hour. She pulled the straps of one glove loose with her teeth and pulled her bare hand free. Then she had to work fast to gently unbox a tiny, jewel-bright blue and white drone from the recess of the map case. 

The drone was barely the size of her palm, and docile as Mei began the activation sequence. After a moment, while Mei’s hand felt the cold pressing dowing around it, the tiny drone shook itself before uttering a bright trill and coming to life. It perching in Mei's hand like a hummingbird. 

Snowball chirped at it, the hummingbird trilled back, and then steadied itself before bursting up into the evening air. It flited up almost out of sight, then darted north, south, east, west, before dropping down to trill at Snowball again. Mei looked at Snowball, who nodded at her in confirmation, a connection established. The drone could monitor weather and atmospheric conditions for a massive range from up here and then send its report to Snowball. 

Snowball burst out laughing suddenly, and Mei looked over as they showed her that the newly activated and highly conscientious drone had already calculated the tides for this part of the world. It was high tide in the Himalayas. Not that it mattered, but her newest generation of weather drones were thorough. Ten years was a long time, and technology moved quickly. The drone trilled happily and flashed jewel bright blue as it flitted out and away. 

"So cute," Mei remarked and patted Snowball's domed head as it hovered up to her. "You too.” She assured it, then pulled her hand back hastily from their icy head and tugged her glove back on. 

The sun touched down onto the mountain range across from Mei, and the entire line of mountain’s snowy spine lit up with gold 

Mei sat on her knees with the little nest of a dock in the snow before her, drank the last of her tea, and looked out as the sunset. The sky above her turned sherbert-pink, peach, and lavender. The mountains around her were cast in gold light and stark blue shadow, and so clear it all looked deceptively close. Mei felt like she could reach out and touch the mountains around her, feel the cold and the texture of the rocks and snow. 

The shadow of the setting sun was at her knees, then the darkness poured up over Mei like a blanket being drawn up. Mei waited, being still, watching the sunset all around her, while Snowball played loop-the-loop with her new drone. 

Mei was on the summit of the mountain when night fell, and the stars began to come out. Bright enough they left a tiny purple burn on her eye when she blinked, so many that Mei felt like the light was hardly lessened. 

The cold began to press in on her, a physical weight she would have needed to carry until she found shelter, if she hadn't made other arrangements. 

"Time to go snowball," Mei said finally. She pulled herself to her feet, screwed the cap down on her thermos, and tucked it safely away. She gave the new weather drone a pat on its hummingbird head for good luck, and turned back the way she'd come. 

Twelve hours of climbing. It was just after 7:30pm. 

Mei was standing on the very top of the mountain, with the tea Zarya had made her this morning warm in her belly and the thoughts with her new drone as it zipped through the air above her. The sunset behind her, the crest of the western mountains just barely edged in a thread of fine gold at its peak, the night sky stark with flame bright stars, and Mei pulled her map case under her arm again, reached inside. 

With a crack that echoed around the mountains like the hammer of a god, Mei unfurled a sheet of highly buffed plastic in one grand sweep. Crazy Carpets had been banned in most parts of the world by concerned parents, but Mei had her own. A shiny pink sheet of plastic with as little friction as sapien and Swedish engineering could design and ski-wax could maintain. 

"Snowball?" She looked around, making sure she was leaving nothing but the weather drone's base, her footprints and the stars. 

Snowball made a tiny chirp from behind her shoulder, seeming to hunker down as she called him. 

"Ready?" Mei tied her toque on with a knot that could have held a ship at dock in a hurricane, steadied her footing, and took her sled in both hands. 

Then as the shades of evening began to fall freely into the true night, Mei tensed, dug deep into snow and ice with her spiked boots, and launched herself out over the edge of the mountain. She landed belly down on fresh, fine powder in her carefully built and ferociously perfected ice trough at speed and accelerating. The longest toboggan run in the world of her own making, and Mei took the switchbacks almost upside down for speed. Laughing and shrieking with delight, Mei flew back down the mountain, leaving a trail of fine powder spinning in her wake.

Back to the basecamp where Zarya waited, back to her team, and her work. 

Back with her old passions, back to her new life.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed, I love Mei very much and I hope you do too.  
> I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/LeoandLancer)! I'm also on [Tumblr](http://leoandlancer.tumblr.com), if you, like I, have trouble leaving. If you'd care to, please come by and say hey!  
> Thank you again for reading <3


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